As the newly sworn-in U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Lesotho, Rob Nolan of St. Thomas à Becket Parish in Reston, said his goal is to provide “assistance and partnership” to the country completely overrun with HIV/AIDS.
Serving at the pleasure of President Bush, Nolan took his oath last Friday in the Ben Franklin room of the State Department in the presence of family, friends and colleagues. In his new position, he will work to partner the United States with the people and government of the southern African country that, according to a 2007 estimate in the CIA-published World Factbook, has a median age of 21 and a life expectancy of fewer than 40 years.
The swearing-in, which was attended also by Father Tom Ferguson, pastor of St. Thomas à Becket, was the first step toward Nolan’s involvement in that partnership.
“I was proud to be there to witness a professional achievement on his part,” Father Ferguson said. “It shows that (Nolan) is as outstanding in his professional life as I would consider him to be in his personal and faith life.”
In order to be successful in Lesotho, Nolan said that he hopes to rely on his faith-filled background, one that stems from his family, Catholic education and extensive world travels.
For the past three decades Nolan, his Villanova University sweetheart Nancy and their growing family have lived in Guinea, Madagascar, Cuba, Finland and Mexico. Born in Philadelphia and raised by Irish-American parents, Nolan was educated in the Catholic tradition from elementary school through college. But it wasn’t until living in Communist Cuba for two years in the mid-1980s that Nolan said he and his wife — then self-proclaimed “lukewarm Catholics” — truly started to appreciate their faith.
“The communists in Cuba had a real strong history of suppressing the Catholic Church,” he said. “All the Catholic churches had been closed and turned into warehouses for food and grain,” and statues of saints were decapitated.
That experience of “being in basically a God-less country” strengthened he and his wife’s faith, Nolan said. “We said we’d never take our Catholic faith for granted again.”
And they didn’t. When the Nolans returned to their Reston faith community after their time in Cuba, they jump-started their activity at the parish. Nolan was elected to the parish council and the couple became extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist as well as joined the Song in the Spirit charismatic prayer group, which Nancy now leads.
Nolan said that being involved in these ways enlightened him to the intricacies of church management and helped him cultivate a better connection with his faith.
“What could be a more important expression than giving the Body and Blood of Christ every week,” he said of his time distributing Communion. It’s a “wonderful spiritual experience” to participate in the liturgy in that way.
And his personal prayer life is fed through Song in the Spirit, a prayer experience focused on the Holy Spirit, he added.
The couple has three children: Meghan, 28, who is married, lives in Bethesda, Md., and works at the Department of Justice; Ryan, 25, who is married and a photographer in Arlington; and Colleen, 22, in graduate school at George Mason University in Fairfax.
“We’re a very close family,” Nolan said. “It’s very critically important to me.”
The bonds that the family shares at home extend to government service. Nolan’s father was a World War II combat Marine before joining the Foreign Service; his mother worked for the State Department; his brother joined the Foreign Service the same year as Nolan did.
“We had this strong sense of patriotism instilled in us from our parents,” Nolan said. “We believe strongly in public service and trying to help the country and help people.”
Even with their constant movement, the Nolans managed to stay connected to their faith.
“One of the beauties of the Catholic faith is the universality of the Church,” Nolan said. “No matter what country you’re in, no matter what culture you’re in, no matter what language you’re in,” the Church’s universality gives a “sense of comfort and a sense of ease.”
When the couple moved to Helsinki, Finland, in the early 1990s, they developed a strong connection with the Carmelite nuns living in a nearby monastery.
“You would go out to the chapel there and it was so peaceful and you could really feel the presence of God,” Nolan said.
Now Nolan hopes to bring that presence to the sick in Africa, a job that will incorporate a “service dimension,” Father Ferguson said, and one that can allow Nolan to live his faith on both a professional and personal level.
“I feel blessed to have the opportunity to help people,” said Nolan, who is due to leave for Lesotho at the end of the month to present his credentials to the country’s king. “I’m very excited about this. It’s not the pomp and circumstance — it’s the ability to do good.”
Gretchen R. Crowe can be reached at gcrowe@catholicherald.com.

(c) Copyright 2007 by Arlington Catholic Herald